On Tuesday night, I attended Patrick Marber's new production of The Producers in central London, featuring the infamous song 'Springtime for Hitler'. The show's programme included a 2001 quote from Mel Brooks: 'If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator, you never win... But if you ridicule them, bring them down with laughter, they can't win. You show how crazy they are.' This felt particularly relevant given that same evening, Jimmy Kimmel returned to American television after ABC and Disney initially pulled his show under pressure from Donald Trump.
Trump, through his FCC appointee Brendan Carr, had threatened ABC's broadcast licence unless Kimmel was removed, citing jokes about Trump following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Disney capitulated, cancelling Kimmel's show indefinitely. Trump celebrated, having also forced CBS to cancel Stephen Colbert's show. However, the move backfired: subscriptions were cancelled, actors threatened to boycott Disney, and even conservative Senator Ted Cruz condemned the assault on free speech. Disney reversed its decision, reinstating Kimmel.
Kimmel's opening monologue was a tour de force, calling the cancellation un-American and accusing Trump of revelling in job losses because he could not take a joke. This marks Trump's biggest domestic defeat since returning to office. His furious response on Truth Social read: 'I can't believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back... his audience is GONE, and his 'talent' was never there.'
The episode demonstrates the power of resistance, with a significant portion of the population—including Trump supporters—saying 'enough'. It remains to be seen whether this will embolden corporate America, which has often cowered in the face of Trump's attacks on law firms, academia, the press, and civil society. But for now, this feels like a turning point.
